Monday, October 29, 2012

Five Hot Trends In Getting Hot Prospects For Your Business Today

Is your business in touch with current consumer behaviour? Are you well informed about your market segment and how your target consumers are living their lives, what their most into these days, and if their online activities have drastically changed over the last couple of years? It's important for any business to obtain current market data, not just to survive, but to actually thrive and to make a better transition into the future. Information, as you already know by now, is power so here are five hot trends on how your company can get the hot prospects it needs.

Get your business on mobile phones. People have changed the way they get on the Internet as handheld devices like tablets and smartphones turn into mobile computers. No longer will you find your consumer waiting to get home to log onto his or her computer to check out a website, purchase products, or read their email. ComScore predicts that the number of mobile users will topple desktop users by 2014 as multi-device ownership (people who have mobile phones also have tablets) skyrockets to 308 percent since 2011. You can even send coupons to your valued customers as Prosper Mobile Insights finds that 82 percent are open to getting coupons on their smartphones and tablets; 51 percent prefer getting coupons through email, 31.9 percent said they'd prefer getting a QR code and scanning it in the store, and 31 percent want to get it through text messages.

Distribute your content through social media like Facebook or Twitter to drive traffic to your website and to promote your business. If your business goals do not include social media marketing customised for one of these highly popular sites, you may be losing out on valuable prospects. Just consider how a mass merchant gets an average of 2.1 million fans and retailers of toys and hobbies have an average of 1.6 million fans on Facebook.

Use forums. Forums, whether they're on social media pages or blogs, will allow you to provide a valuable solution to prospects who may be asking questions that relate to your products or services. When you offer an answer and you do enough of these forums to build credibility for your brand or company, it's only a matter of time when prospects come to you to buy a product or obtain a service.

Show it, don't tell it. Use image-driven campaigns and not just written content. People want to watch a quick, engaging video about your new service or product rather than read a 500-word article about it. So produce videos for your website, your social media page, and your YouTube channel. Consider doing a web TV show. Present stunning images related to your business on Pinterest.

Target your demographic - it never goes out of style and it is always quite effective in getting your ideal prospects in that you don't waste resources on prospects that turn out to be cold. This will mean knowing where your consumers are online. If your company is targeting women, your business should be on Facebook. According to Lightspeed Research there are more women (75 percent) on Facebook than men (63 percent).

With women spending more hours on social networking sites than men, and global internet traffic said to reach 1.3 zettabytes (trillion gigabytes) by 2016 according to Cisco Visual Networking Index forecast, clearly, the usual sales follow ups will not do with today's consumers. Use these five trends for reaching your ideal prospects today and usher your business into the future.

By simply following a few steps to ensure your business grows accordingly, you will gain a good footing in the business world and attain your sales goals.